Free Tonya Hurley_Ghostgirl_03 by Lovesick

iPod?” Damen pressed.

“Honestly, I can’t even find it,” Scarlet said, beginning to get a little impatient with all this music talk. “My earbuds are broken anyway.”

“They’re probably under your pillow or something,” Damen responded. “Why don’t you check?”

Scarlet thought it was a pointless suggestion, but her room was so topsy-turvy it could be anywhere. She decided to humor him. As she searched around under the supersized crushed velvet bolster, she felt what seemed to be a small box. She took it out from underneath the pillow and saw it was wrapped simply in brown paper but adorned with a tiny bunch of micro-mini Peter Pans. It was beautiful.

“What is this?” she asked, completely stunned.

She opened the box and pulled out her old iPod.

“Turn it on,” he demanded.

“That’s your job,” Scarlet said sarcastically.

She booted up the player and reached for the earbuds underneath and pulled out brand-new ones. They were earbuds in the shape of hearts. A note at the bottom of the box said, “Y.T.N.F.”

He had to have someone on the inside, and she knew pretty much who that person was. In fact, Scarlet was almost touched by it. Petula had never done anything kind for her or for anyone else before. This was a first. It also explained, Scarlet thought, all that poking around her room her sister had been doing lately.

“Go on, listen,” he said.

As she selected the playlist, tears started streaming down her face, and her hazel eyes got brighter and glassier and even more piercing. Damen had loaded the player with all their favorite songs—songs that told their story, songs that meant something. Scarlet stared at the tiny roses and began to wonder if Damen’s message was not just in the music, but in the Peter Pans as well. Then again, maybe she was reading too much into it. He definitely meant for the gift to show her how he felt, though.

“I love it,” Scarlet said as Damen sat there anxiously waiting for her reaction. “I love you,” she added softly.

“You do?” Damen asked proudly.

“Damen, don’t you know?” Scarlet asked. “Can’t you see the writing on the wall?”

Damen wasn’t following.

“The writing on the wall, can’t you see it?” Scarlet asked again, pointing her finger at the computer screen and directing him to look over his shoulder. Damen turned around, but all he could see was the “This Is Not a Love Song” promo PiL poster that she’d given him hanging on the wall over his bed.

“Take the poster down,” she said.

He gently removed the tape from the top of the panoramic poster that practically filled up his whole wall, careful not to tear it, and peeled it off, revealing line after line of song lyrics written largely in Scarlet’s handwriting across the room. He was stunned.

“I wrote it for you,” Scarlet said sweetly, smiling.

“How did you do this?” Damen wondered aloud.

“I sent your roommate a scan from my song diary,” Scarlet explained. “He printed it off on clear vellum sheet and put it in an art projector and enlarged it. He traced it to look like my handwriting.”

It was breathtaking, magical, and unbelievably romantic.

“I can’t believe you did this,” Damen said.

“I thought it would ward off any female stragglers that happened to find their way into your dorm room.”

“You are amazing,” he said.

He put his hand to the screen, and she to hers, as they logged off for the night.

Damen lay with his head at the foot of the bed for a long while, strumming his guitar, reading and rereading the words of Scarlet’s song, and deciphering the layers of meaning as only he could.

Scarlet transferred the audiotape to her computer and loaded the converted MP3 files into her refurbished player. She listened to Eric’s demo playing through her new earbuds from Damen as she drifted off to sleep.

The Wendys staked out the Kensington house from the backseat of Wendy Anderson’s car and waited for Petula to make a